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“H’m,” replied Shubin, “I’ll tell you, Andrei Petrovich, what all this springs from. You’ve described the feelings of an isolated individual, who is not alive, but merely observes, exhilarated. Why observe? Live, and you’ll feel the excitement. However much you knock at Nature’s door, she won’t respond intelligibly, because she’s mute. She will resound achingly, like a vibrating string,

“Have you noticed,” Bersenev began suddenly, accompanying his words with gesticulations, “what a strange feeling Nature evokes in us? Everything about her is so complete, so clear – I mean to say, so self-satisfied – and we both understand and admire this; yet, at the same time she always evokes, in me at least, a certain uneasiness, a certain anxiety, sadness even.

“No, brother,” Shubin went on, “you’re clever, you’re a philosopher, you’ve a third from Moscow University; arguing with you is frightening, especially for me, a drop-out student; but this is what I will say to you: outside my art, I love beauty only in women… in girls,

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Bersenev interposed. “That’s a paradox. If you won’t empathize with beauty, won’t love her wherever you encounter her, she will not yield herself up to you even in your art. If a superb view or superb music does not speak to your soul, I mean to say, if you do not empathize—”
“Oh, you empathist,” said Shubin vehemently, bursting out laughing at the word he had coined;

...we mustn’t spread ourselves so thinly: our arms are too short. We cast our bait at one tiny spot and watch. If we get a bite – bravo! If we don’t…”

You direct my attention to nature and say: ‘There’s beauty there too.’ Of course, there’s beauty in everything – there’s even beauty in your nose – but you can’t pursue every type of beauty.

“No, sir, it’s not my forte,” Shubin retorted, pushing his hat to the back of his head. “I’m a meat man, sir; my business is meat, modelling meat: shoulders, arms, legs, but here there’s no form, no completeness; it’s here, there and everywhere, so go and catch it!”
“But there’s beauty there too,” remarked Bersenev. “

“I was admiring the view. Look how those fields shimmer in the heat of the sun!”
“That’s a fine palette,” said Shubin. “In short, nature.”
Bersenev shook his head.
“You ought to take delight in all this more than me. It’s your forte: you’re an artist.”

You wouldn’t credit it, but Man, the king of creation, the highest of beings, looks at them, yet they’ve no time for him; then again, some gnat will settle on the nose of the king of creation and begin to feed off it. It’s an insult.

“What amazes me most of all in ants, beetles and other members of the insect race is their remarkable seriousness: they run back and forth with such serious physiognomies, as if their lives too mean something!